Centre for Anthropological Research and Studies
(Anthropological Group for the sexes and domestic life)
Universite Lumičre Lyon 2

INTRODUCTION

And men ?

How are men living twenty years after the re-emergence of feminism ? What are they
doing in the home ? How are they adapting to cleanliness and tidiness? If we
accept that not all men are the absent men who feature in some publications, that not all
women are women subjected to male tyranny, then how is the emergence of the masculine
being negotiated in the private sphere ?

In the social sciences, cleanliness and tidiness often serve as indicators for the
weight of domestic work carried out by women in couples, for the " division of
chores ", that is the degree of male participation. In daily life it is commonly
thought that men do little or no tidying and that their thresholds of cleanliness are
lower than that of their companions.

In recent researchwe wished to investigate these preconceptions of order and disorder.
We wanted to know if, beyond the curse hurled at mens pseudo-incapacity to tidy up,
it might not be possible to determine the effects, still unexplored, of the construction
of gender and the social and sexual division of work in the domestic sphere.

However, any study of the masculine in domestic space is confronted with a double
methodological difficulty : how can those who are dominant and intimacy be
studied ?

Godelier (1982), Mathieu (1985) and Dagenais (1988) are some of the authors who have
underlined the difficulty of analysing dominance in social relations. The structure of
domination is marked by the opacity of mens social practices, sometimes concealed in
the " mens houses ".

Various previous works have shown us the heuristic pertinence of addressing the outer
edges of social relations between the sexes. In order to study the emergence of the
masculine in domestic space it is still necessary to find men on whom it is possible to
impose a hypothesis of change. We therefore turned to men who claim or explicitly claimed
that they wished to question male/female relations; we selected two groups of different
men from the Rhone Alpine area with whom, thanks to previous research, a bond of trust had
already been established.

As for knowing how to explore intimacy and how to study habits which have become
sedimented and routine beyond memory and discourse (Kaufmann, De Singly 1990), there is
obviously no one, exhaustive answer. As far as we are concerned we have chosen a
methodology which combines " living with " and " living
at ". A researcher, after spending several months conducting preliminary,
semi-directed interviews, lived in a number of households as an invited guest. This method
of enquiry presupposes certain conditions : the drawing-up of a contact defining the
limits of confidentiality, the situation of the guest room and possibly a sharing of the
costs incurred during the stay All the ethnographic studies were summarised and the
subjects of the enquiry were given access to and could dispute the findings. Observations
on certain intimate areas (particularly sexual practices and things told in confidence to
the researcher )were integrated into the common parts of the analysis.

THE ABSENT MAN .... IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

The transformations which have affected the family have made sociologists and
anthropologists multiply the different angles of approach in order to deconstruct
" the object of the family ". Divorce, conjugal cohabitation, types of
upbringing, the type of conjugal functioning - exchange or debt, domestic work are all
objects of study. But in many cases, there is an oversight or a lack : man - or
rather men, taken here not as a neutral, hegemonic gender or an outlet for referral but as
members of a social category in permanent interaction with the other or others, notably
women.

Our research is part of a problematic of the construction of the social category
" man ". Due to the necessity of constructing a social category
" woman ", to earn recognition for the importance of the domestic work
carried out by women and faced with the difficulty of becoming familiar with the practices
of those who are dominant, the analysis of the male/female relations has often been
limited to social relations between the sexes. Men are more often invoked or convoked than
constructed as sociological realities. In spite of different calls for research into the
whole field (Devreux 1985, Daune-Richard, Devreux 1986, Mathieu 1973, 1985) man remains
absent from the social sciences.

The emergence of the masculine in the social sciences, as in feminist studies,
corresponds, moreover with the arrival of new researchers from the ranks of either the
social antisexist movements or the generations who, from the start of their school days
grew up in a mixed society after what rapidly became known as the sexual revolution
(Welzer-Lang 1989, Filiod 1991).

THE CATEGORIES OF CLEANLINESS AND TIDINESS

To a great extent we are basing our analyses on the pioneering work of Mary Douglas
(1967). In order to make intelligible the internal and external limits of social relations
which make up a system, she invites us to look at the artificial distinction each society
creates between dirt and cleanliness, pure and impure, the body being the mirror of
society.

Our language distinguishes between clean/dirty and order/disorder. Our way of
considering clean as opposed to dirty and order as opposed to disorder combine and unite.
According to Douglas, absolute dirtiness does not exist : " in eliminating
dirt, (.....) we are simply making a new order in our environment "
(Douglas :24). Thus, that which is declared dirty must serve to make us understand
the social order that such a declaration expresses.

In our study of the sexing of domestic space and its evolutions, of which the emergence
of the masculine becomes a modern vicissitude , the division of the sexes can be studied
by means of the categories of cleanliness and tidiness ; we therefore need to define
more precisely what lies behind the generic term of " disorder ". Our
observations show that disorder is placed in the same category as
" contamination " and " dirtiness ".

Disorder is simultaneously the object of a designation and a qualification Apart
from the social adherence which can be translated into the notions of disorder ,
self-qualified disorder and that designated and qualified by the cohabitants interact in
the management of cleanliness and tidiness in domestic space.

Self-qualified disorder shows an individuals personal threshold which allows us
access in a projective manner to the ideal arrangement of domestic space : " Its
a mess, I must clean ", " its a real pig-sty, Ive had
enough, I dont know where I am any more. " The person no longer seems
able to act normally, everywhere seems contaminated. At other times this personal
threshold is confronted with an external norm, regulated by the cohabitants : " I
must clean up, she cant stand it " or " hes going
to kick up a fuss, its such a tip ! " ; he/she internalises
the norm of the other, he/she submits to the limit which defines the tolerance threshold
of the other cohabitant.

As for designated disorder, this is often defined by the person who controls all or
part of the tidying (in general the woman) for the person who does none or only part of
the work of tidying (in general the man). In other cases disorder is formulated as a
reproach by those close to the man who is in sole charge of tidying (whether he lives
alone or not). Based on these observations, we can sketch a typology of disorder :

it can be punctual : when the person leaves their things everywhere, does
not back them back in their place ;

it can be circumspect : it is a case of one or two rooms in the domestic
space which have generally been appropriated and controlled totally by one or the
other ;

it can be total : encompassing all the domestic space, the multiple signs of
appropriation of the space signify the non-availability to anyone other than the person
who occupies the space ;

finally it can be ordered, i.e. qualified as a "different
order " ; while the network of friends qualify Antoines space as a
" tip " " mess " or
" shithouse ", he replies that it is an " Aladdins
cave " a " grotto " or " museum " to
indicate that it is a case of a different order, his own.

PREVENTATIVE/CURATIVE : A CASE OF GENDER

From an anthropological perspective, cleaning can be considered a secular rite of
purification which permits the reestablishment of order. The aim of the rite is not to
exhibit a different order of arrangement of the social relations in progress in the space
under consideration, but quite simply to define and control unstintingly the symbolic
order which it outs into place. From this perspective there are two sorts of rite ;

the rites of renewal : spring cleaning or moving ;

the rites of confirmation and control : ordinary, regular cleaning or cleaning
after a party which enable the redisposition of the limits of the household.

Beyond reasons of hygiene or magic to legitimise the rite (against illness or its
symbolic intrusion symbolised by dirt, in order to purify a space...), the rite, whether
one of renewal or confirmation enables the precision of before and after. It is a moment
of negotiation of the pure and impure, of the clean and the tidy in the domestic space.
This Durkheimian approach to the collective representations which are the basis of the
rite allow us to grasp the inter-relation between our categories of cleanliness and dirt
and the social relations which underlie them.

We have taken advantage of the atypical nature of the spaces being studied to observe
in particular what actually provokes cleaning. Whatever kind of disorder the person wishes
to transform, whether it has been designated or not, we focused on what provokes the
participant to start cleaning. Along with the variables linked to membership of social
class, we observed a sexing in cleaning and tidying, i.e. different practices between the
men and women who clean.

The result is that women act to prevent disorder where men act to cure it

The vast majority of women either invoke regular cleaning (" I do it every
Saturday morning as the house is never really dirty then ") or a risk of
contamination (" it was starting to get dirty.... I like it when its
clean here ". Cleaning before it gets too dirty, before the invasion
of disorder, they express in a more or less formal manner an identification between
domestic space and the person who cleans it. They show that preventative action is linked
to the desire to conform to the social model of " good wife " or
" good mother ", thus to the normative pressure of society and to a
cyclical management of domestic work presented as "simpler and more
practical " ; " with the children, I dont really ask any
more, I tidy... ".

In other cases, they cite the intrusion of body fluids : " often when
I have my period, I have to clean up " said one thirty-year-old woman. The
association of blood-contamination-ill humour already studied by other anthropologists
(Heritier 1984-85), also has a preventative virtue : " in any case, I
know I couldnt stand it if I didnt clean , so... ". We note that
the association of body fluid (in particular during menstruation) and
decontamination-cleansing has also been observed in domestic spaces where the woman seemed
not to adopt preventive measure for the everyday house-keeping and even denied having done
so.

As for men, whether they live alone or not, those who decide to clean were able to show
us why they did so : " its dirty, you can see that ".
And the man points to a dustball near a piece of furniture, a mark on the floor, a pile of
clothes in the living room, the fact that he cant find his things etc. The mark of
disorder is always the same. A man cleans when it is already dirty. Some of them
mention their moods, but these are mentioned metaphorically : " when
Im on edge I clean ", " its always the same, when things
are OK I dont care..... when I dont feel good or when Im in a bad
temper, I clean, tidy up ".

Even if each individual has their own threshold of dirtiness, influenced by their
social class, family upbringing or cultural origin, the fact remains that as products of
different social construction, men and women have different symbolic norms for
cleanliness and tidiness.

STATIC ORDER, DYNAMIC ORDER

MATERIAL AND SYMBOLIC THRESHOLD ORDERS

Moreover, in addition to the sexing of cleaning practices, the representations of
tidiness as seen by men and women exhibit a sexed differentiation in models of order.

Generally speaking, the more women are in a position which conforms with the position
assigned in a dominant female manner, the more they describe and make use of a smooth,
undifferentiated order, where all objects of the same class must appear equal, often
hidden behind doors and cupboards. This calls to mind a row of onions, a library where all
books are aligned or a fitted kitchen. Women value a facade of order, a static order .

At the other end of this static order, men emphasis that " it is tidy
because I know where everything is ". Some of them point to assorted piles
of paper, clothes or underwear (sometime hidden in the wardrobe), stacks of different
sized plates........For them this can mean tidiness, since each object is in its place and
respects their internal limits of domestic space. The hairbrush in the sitting room, the
iron in the corner of the dining room, the sheets in a heap in the cupboard in the lounge
are all part of Dominiques order. Since the different natural boundaries of domestic
space (the separation between bathroom, bedroom, living room) are no longer respected,
this order will soon be qualified as disorder by others. The more that visitors have
internalised the usual hierarchies(i.e. the boundaries of non-contamination) considered
as " normal " in our culture today, the more this individual
order will represent a danger. This is what we shall call dynamic order .

Thus, cleanliness and tidiness create material and symbolic orders.

It is therefore understandable that cleanliness and tidiness are a controversial item
for couples, since he or she understands different practices and representations when
using the same expression (a clean and presentable space).

Of course, this is a description of stereotypical male and female positions. Men and
women, exposed to the social mobility of sex, modify social prescriptions (Daune Richard
1990). Some men and women, following a departure from sexed models and by refusing to
respect norms, behave differently as far as the limits of order and disorder are
concerned. Differentiation in cleanliness and tidiness therefore serves as an intra-gender
discriminator, as a means of distinguishing between male and female counterparts.

But whatever the individual variations, each particular order (that of the man or the
woman - whether qualified as disorder or not by those who are close to them) becomes the
mark of appropriation of territory. The limits of order and disorder become thresholds
(Lawrence 1986) which allow the symbolic demarcation of his and her territory.

Thus, cleanliness and tidiness become a significant means of regulating domestic space
and the social relations of sex which occur there. They constitute a spatial inscription
which we will examine below.

DOMESTIC SPATIALISATION : THE KITCHEN/WC AXIS

In addition to the symbolic and actual norms of cleanliness and tidiness, how is a
particular domestic space to be interpreted ?

Our research, following corporal symbolism as defined by Douglas, enabled us to isolate
the relevance of a kitchen/WC axis for an analysis of domestic space and the social
relations of sex which govern it. Our hypothesis is that the individual relation to bodily
orifices underlines the internal or external limits of the system organised by social
relations at work in domestic space.

In our enquiry - or during previous research - we saw that the kitchen/WC axis
functioned as an axis of refuge for a certain number of couples. The kitchen is used by
the wife as a place of refuge from the sight, the intrusion or physical contact with the
husband. She cites reasons of hygiene (" the kitchen is open, open-plan as
they say, it smells ")of aesthetics (" since I dont
always wash up after a meal, thats not good, so I prefer to shut the door and go
with our guests into the sitting room ") or the norms of cleanliness and
tidiness.

In these domestic spaces, the spatialisation of the tidying of utensils and kitchen
products behind multiple doors often conforms to the facade of order and permits wives to
exclude others with whom she lives : " you dont know where it is and
youre going to make a mess in my kitchen " becomes the refrain which
affirms exclusive usage. Moreover, this is not questioned by their husbands or partners.
After having listened to women during other studies (Welzer-Lang 1988, 1990) explain that
" at least in the kitchen, when hes in front of the box, I have
some peace ", our hypothesis is that the specific arrangement of cleanliness and
tidiness in the kitchen, the management of the risk of contamination by the presence or
introduction of other members of the domestic space permit the establishment of internal
boundaries for the family and in so doing give structure to the womens place of
refuge in this sort of domestic space.

On the other hand, men isolate themselves in the WC, with or without various kinds of
reading matter. They give as reasons : " there at least I have
peace and quiet " ; " In our household we have agreed that she
wont bother me when Im in the bog " ; " since it
stinks, she leaves me in peace ". First of all let us say that some
men, whatever their life style, will maintain this practice of enclosure and refuge in the
WC. Learned in childhood, this model of sexing of domestic space remains ingrained, even
when they control all their domestic space : " Even when Im alone, I
shut myself in the bog with a newspaper ", says Jullien (bachelor).

In certain domestic spaces, the man is not the only one to take refuge in the WC. Some
children, even wives, also take reading material, making this practice of refuge into a
family habit. But in this instance it would seem that only the father can legitimately use
all the time-space that he wishes in the WC.

Douglas has shown that in the case of castes in India, the sexed division of domestic
space finds a physical inscription. Here, places of refuge utilise the mouth (food) and
the anus for spatial inscription. The kitchen and the WC display parallel enclosures. The
layout of domestic space and its control organise symbolically our divisions between
eating/mouth - a noble task- and expurgating/anus - a less noble and degrading task -
whose scale of value is that of contamination.

This spatial practice of refuge in the kitchen/WC axis has a two-fold effect : it
tends to exclude the man from domestic space or symbolically legitimise his absence and
forefront the maternal roles of the woman. The symbolic assimilation of the man to the
anus and defecation, within our current cultural schemes of values, devalues man in
domestic space and induces him to seek gratification elsewhere : in the outbuildings
of domestic space where his professional know-how is useful (workshop, garage) or in
public space where man and the masculine are appreciated. As for the worth of women being
measured by the kitchen, this is a matter of gratification not so much for the woman but
rather for the nurturing mother.

APERTURES AND MOVEMENTS

The type of household organisation that has a double place of refuge is particularly
common in the case of strongly bicategorised couples.

In the evolution of social relations of sex, we see jointly an opening of the places of
refuge (kitchen, WC) together with greater freedom of movement of bodies, odours between
the different parts of the house. Parallel with this negotiated allocation of territory
(people are seen to knock and wait for permission to enter the others territory,
even if the door is open) common areas also open up.

Physical movement is parallel to multiple utilisation (by woman, man and children) of
the kitchen and peripheral space (garage, workshop, office...). The order of tidiness in
these rooms is simplified in such a way as to forefront the autonomy of all concerned
(children included). The utilisation of the kitchen or WC no longer corresponds with
voluntary relegation :

in the kitchen, the preparation of meals gives rise to collective rites ; the
odours, the dishes move with ease from the place of preparation to the place of
consumption. Note that this observation has been made in very different social circles. It
is only the difference in equipment, furnishings, even the utilisation of staff which mark
the different social classes ;

in the WC, on the one hand there will be seen a permanent opening of the door or its
absence and on the other, for WCs situated in the bathroom, the joint utilisation, But WCs
also are symbolically open : when a man continues a conversation with another
inhabitant of the house or visitor while he is urinating or having a bowel movement :
or the iconography displayed on the walls, whether it is the result of personal work or
not (poems, quotations, photos, cards, posters....).

Let us add finally that the double transparency which can be seen in the utilisation of
open shelves and glass storage jars is an integral part of these new definitions of
domestic space.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE MASCULINE IN DOMESTIC SPACE ; MODELS OF UNION IN EVOLUTION

Cleanliness and tidiness, the thresholds defined by the limits of order and disorder
and the evolution of domestic spatialisation also provide us with information which the
men in this study experience with women. The management of cleanliness and tidiness is
thus rightly part of the way in which domestic space is regulated. Although it is not
possible for us to propose an exhaustive model on the basis of such a small sample,
regularities can be seen in the sexual paths of these men.. The former show that masculine
changes describe and important sequentiality and that they are articulated in the
respective places of men and women in the professional sphere.

Most men, whether they have been male militants or not , describe an initial domestic
questioning, which gives way to a questioning as a couple or as a group. Their
" women-friends " as Denis calls them , ask them about machismo,
obligatory virility, attitudes of poser and their non-participation in housework, but they
teach them at the same time " a sense of colour, an eye for beauty ",
how to organise and arrange domestic space and, in some cases, the basics of cooking. This
apprenticeship, articulated as a feeling of guilt with respect to women and feminism,
leads, for some men, to a mimetic behaviour regarding their female friends. Here we are in
the presence of an androgynous model of fusion/indifferentiation where the man bases his
norms on practices which are said to be feminine. Some will become " certified
childminders " or house husbands who wait each day for the return of spouses.
Others, in mathematically problematic attempts to be egalitarian, count each day the
number of chores which each has carried out so that each can do the same. This androgynous
model of fusion/indifferentiation, whether arithmetic or not) can be summed up in the
formula : the one is the other (Badinter 1986)

There is then a generalised statement of impossible fusion, of the irrelevance of the
model of " saying everything " (Bejin 1982 ; 1990). Faced with
the multiple micro-conflicts which originate in the tendency of men to forget
" their things ", in other words to leave various objects lying
around, the necessity of being explicit about career choice, masculine - and feminine -
desires to abandon the eternal temporary on the occasion of residential and/or amatory
mobility, the model is redefined to become progressively what we call the model of joint
autonomies.

In this model, each marks their territory by their symbolism of cleanliness and
tidiness, which the other respects and there is negotiation of the norms of cleanliness
and tidiness for those areas which are held in common.

This model shows us different male reactions marked by an important sequentiality
linked to the differentiated inscriptions in the professional sphere of men and women.
Masculine changes are precarious . Some men - more than half of the men in this
study - decide to live alone for various periods of time, " so that they
dont have to worry about " cleanliness and tidiness and/or jealousy.
In other cases the positions of the sexes take on more traditional divisions. The example
of Eric is illuminating,

At the start of his life with Marianne, the couple tried a model of
fusion/indifferentiation, with Eric taking part in domestic and parental management at the
expense of his professional career. Following a series of conflicts about the disorder in
Erics office, Marianne decided one day " to chuck everything out ".
Eric did not react and invested more time in his professional life. Marianne, with fewer
academic qualifications, decided to stay at home to look after the children. The model of
a bicategorised couple then appeared ; today Eric comes home late in the evening and
helps Marianne at weekends. The office is used occasionally (correspondence,
administration, drawings,...) Eric is now present .... on the walls or shelves where there
are photos, his own work, common souvenirs etc.

DISCUSSION

The study of the emergence of the masculine in domestic space, but more globally the
comparative study of the social categories of sex and their social practices would seem to
confirm the existence of a " double, asymmetrical standard "
(Welzer-Lang 1992 ; Welzer-Lang, Filiod 1992) : preventive women, curative man,
the masculine and feminine symbolics in domestic space are dissimilar with regard to
cleanliness and tidiness and translate different social constructions. This confirms our
work on domestic masculine violence where men and women, both violent and those who suffer
violence do not define violence in the same way.

Moreover, our research is too empirical to permit any generalisation of masculine
change in a conceptual manner. However, these changes do exist, exhibit an important
sequentiality - to a great extent linked to interactions with the professional sphere -
and are registered spatially in domestic space. Notably the symbolic appropriation of
territory and the joint opening of the kitchen/WC axis which is diametrically opposed to
the devaluation of the masculine assimilated to the WC/anus in bicategorised couples.

The appearance of the model of joint autonomies or the fact of living alone are new
data which must be addressed. These tendencies can, in effect, lead to the affirmation of
a model where the variable of gender will no longer be a main discriminator in practice,
symbolic and function, thus giving rise to a third order ; or, as our research seems
to show, a consolidation of masculine and feminine symbolics which can lead to an
increased individualisation in the demand for housing.

In line with this research, it seems important to us that complementary work, in other
cultures and with other types of population, should be carried out in order to make the
analysis more precise. Cleanliness and tidiness are paradigms of the regulation of the
social relations of sex at work in domestic space ; other sociological and
anthropological approaches must enable us to unravel in the future the stitches of
everyday life, the elements which are sensitive to an evolution of the social relations of
sex.